In the past months, a set of posters has been created, one for each sustainable development goal. They do not map the goals and their target based on indicators as such. The poster series tells the story of cartographic diversity, of mapping options, and of multiple map perspectives. Each of the goals has been mapped from a particular perspective by different ICA Commissions. All posters have a short take-home-message that should make one aware of particular strengths of the map.

The ICA Commission on Location-Based Services is currently starting an initiative to develop a cross-cutting research agenda for the field of Location-Based Services (LBS), aiming to identify key research questions and challenges that are essential for the LBS development in the next 5 or 10 years.

Inspired by the ICA workshop Envisioning the Future of Cartographic Research organized by several sister commissions (Cognitive Visualization, Use and User Issues, Geovisualization and Map Design), the process of producing this research agenda will be designed as a joint activity of the LBS research community:

We invite all interested parties to write a one paragraph proposal to describe what they believe are the “big problems” that should be addressed to bring LBS research on a higher level.

The commission chairs together with several invited experts will then examine, classify, and group these proposals, and provide a first list of “key problems”. The list will be circulated to the LBS research community, and we will then invite everyone to write a one-page position paper to further develop cross-cutting research directions and plans toward these “key problems”.

Built on the success of previous conferences in this series, LBS 2016 aims to offer a platform for scholars, researchers, and industry/market operators from various disciplines and practice to meet, interact and exchange knowledge, experience, plans and ideas on how LBS can and could be improved and on how it will influence both science and society.

The Call for Papers is currently open. Deadlines for submission are June 1 for full papers, July 1 for work in progress, and September 18 for showcases. High-quality submissions are intended to be published in the Journal of Location Based Services and in a book of the Springer series Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography. More information can be found at lbsconference.org.

We are looking forwards to your contributions and to meeting you in Vienna!

All chairs and vice-chairs of the ICA commissions and working groups were invited to join an ICA meeting in Vienna on 8–9 November 2015 to plan and discuss their activities for the term 2015–2019. 46 chairs, vice-chairs and members of the executive committee followed the invitation and spent two intensive workshop days at Technische Universität Wien.

The 12th International Symposium on Location-Based Services was held in Augsburg, Germany, from 16–18 September 2015. It was addressed at researchers, industry operators and students of different backgrounds (scientific, engineering and humanistic) whose work is either focused on or affined to Location Based Services (LBS). The conference featured Alexander Zipf from Heidelberg University and Xiaolin Meng from University of Nottingham as keynote speakers. An overview over the program can be found on lbs2015.tum.de. Selected papers are planned to be published in the Journal of Location Based Services.

27 commissions and 3 working groups were elected for the term 2015–2019 by the ICA General Assembly 2015. We are currently in the process of updating the website to reflect these changes. Also some of the commissions are still preparing or updating their websites. In the meantime, we invite you to have a look at the short “Commissions at a glance” presentations, which the new commissions chairs gave during ICC 2015: